The World Below

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Summary: The World Below
Review: Sue Miller knows characters. She knows how to build them so subtly that you feel like you knew them right from the start. That is what happens here with both Cath and her grandmother, Georgia. We learn about Georgia as a young woman, what she went thru in the sanitorium, her marriage, and her relationship with Cath. And we go through Cath's need to just get away from everything she knows in California and soak in her past in Vermont.

Those looking for plot driven novels need not apply here. This is solely character driven and if you like these characters, you will fly through this one.

Rating:
Summary: Not up to par
Review: Sue Miller seems to have written this when she was preoccupied with something else. Her imagination isn't put to work here, and the book is not up to her best writing. The novel isn't terrible, but it seems to be a half-hearted or failed effort.

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Summary: Never disappointing
Review: Sue Miller writes about people we know. She writes about simple things we do like going to the grocery store, getting divorced, opening trunks in the attic and finding treasures. You think you should be bored when your reading her books. After all, the characters are mundane, suburban, real. But you're not bored. You're completely sucked into their stories, their lives, even their small not quite shocking at all revelations. And like Elizabeth Berg she says something so big in a story so simple that the impact is quite memorable. The World Below makes an impression. It makes a point. I like it when stories have a point.

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Summary: A decent read...
Review: Sue Miller's latest novel, *The World Below*, examines the lives of two women across generations. Georgia Rice, at age nineteen, is sent to a sanitorium for tuberculosis treatment. Her experiences during the six month stay resound clearly in her diaries as her granddaughter, Cath, reads them almost six decades later.

Cath, a fifty-something divorcee (twice), has raised three children and needs to determine where she wants to take her life. She decides to move cross country from her familiar teaching job in San Francisco to her grandparents' home in Vermont. As she begins her new life in Vermont, she discovers her grandmother's diaries. These diaries give Cath new insight into Georgia's existence and helps her make some decisions of her own.

The novel wasn't my favorite by Sue Miller (*While I Was Gone* wins that prize), but it was definitely worth the read. I'd suggest *When Mountains Walked* by Kate Wheeler as a possible alternative.

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Summary: Good Things Come in Small Stories
Review: Sue Miller's newest novel, The World Below, may be short on plot, but it is full of small rich moments which make the reader who has lived in this world awhile sit up and say "yes!". So many identifiable moments in a life are gorgeously painted in the exquisite language of this book. The honesty with which failed relationships are described, new relationships are considered, children's hurts are borne, parents mistakes are repeated--all are beautifully illustrated in Miller's simple tale of two generations of women looking at their lives. Her small ephipanies are delivered so subtly and unadorned that sometimes the reader does not know what has hit him. The truth has hit him. This is a good thing to find in a quiet book.

I especially loved the bumpy love story of Georgia and her doctor husband. If I had one criticism of the book, it wouldbe to say that I found the story of Georgia and Seward's romance rather flat. I could not feel their passion ans was rather uninvolved with their affair. On the contrary, I found Georgia's and her husband's love life to be tender and painful and real. Brava, anyway, for Sue Miller. A beautifully written book, in my opinion.

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Summary: Miller reveals the emotional worlds below the surface.
Review: The small, personal, domestic dramas in the lives of women, which Miller portrays in this soul-baring, confessional narrative, will make this book appealing for many readers--chiefly women, I suspect--who will see themselves or events from their own lives in the emotional challenges faced by Catherine Hubbard and her grandmother, Georgia Rice. But those who are hoping for a book which rises above the here and now and into the realm of universal themes and truths may be less enchanted.

Catherine is a twice divorced mother of three from California who inherits and moves temporarily into the Vermont cottage in which she lived with her grandparents during her teen years. Long interested in her grandparents' seemingly successful marriage, which contrasts sharply with her own marriages, Catherine embarks on some serious soul-searching as she tries to decide whether to stay permanently in Vermont and begin a new life. While she is there, she discovers her grandmother's diaries and learns that her grandmother, too, faced personal crises and challenges.

The let-it-all-hang-out confessions of the minutiae of Catherine's and Georgia's emotional lives seem, somehow, intrusive to me, too personal--not because they are so revelatory or shocking but because they are so mundane, so self-conscious. The reader is hard pressed to find many universal truths which can illuminate aspects of our own lives in these revelations, and I ended up learning more about the daily emotional lives of these women than I really wanted to know. Additionally, Georgia's diaries did not ring true to me. Dignity, restraint, and, most of all, privacy, are so integral to the character of lifelong residents of Down East Maine and Vermont, especially elderly ones, that while I could accept Georgia's behavior as real, I couldn't imagine anyone of her era putting it all in writing, and her supposed intention of having Catherine read the account some day seems too pat. In her treatment of "the world below," I wish Miller had cast a brighter light into the emotional murk to reveal more of the universal truth we all seek.

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Summary: Engaging plot and characters!
Review: The World Below is the latest book by the acclaimed author Sue Miller. Moving from presnt day to almost 75 years before, Miller introduces her readers to two extraordinary characters who are described through parallel stories. And as we read we are caught up in these womens lives as long held screts are revealed.

Kat is a twice divorced woman and the mother of three children who live all over the world. Teaching in California , she is unsure what to do with her grandmothers house when she inherits it. Leaving her home in Califronia and journeying to Vermont, Kat has mixed emotions about either selling or keeping the house and thinks by spending time there she will know what to do. Primarily rasied by her grandparents during her mothers mental illness and then death, Catherine Hubbard has very fond memories of the house where she grew up. But now she wonder sif she wants to disrupt her life by moving to Vermont and isn't sure she can fit into small town life. As she spends her days walking through the small town and making friends, Kat discovers her grandmothers diary while cleaning out the attic and now old secrets are suddenly revealed which will parallel Kat's life in many ways.

And as Kat reads the diary we learn the story about her grandmother Georgia Rice. The oldest of three children Georgia assumes responsibility of her siblings and family home when her mother dies at a young age. Resigned to being the caregiver to her father and family, she watches as her friends leave home either for further education or marriage. But when a sudden illness foces Georgia to be removed from her home and hospitalized, it is the first time she is on her own and ironically in a position to enjoy life and make her own decisions.

This book provides the reader with a knowledge of both Kat and Georgia's lives as the years go by and Georgia eventually does marry and then Kat comes to live with her. And we learn more about Kat's life as she attends school in Vermont, marries her first husband and moves to California. The book does come to a stunning conclusion when Kat finds her grandmothers diary and is able to put the pieces together about her life which few if any knew anything about

I enjoyed this book thorughly especially the use of the parallel stories which Ms. Miller did an excellent job of describing for her readers.

Rating:
Summary: Just "Okay"
Review: THE WORLD BELOW lacks energy in its delivery. I have read everything Sue Miller has written and have enjoyed some of her books more than others. Her latest work is just okay. It's written well. It wasn't necessarily boring. It just didn't have the punch that I want in a book. I like stories that weave the past into the present as this does. Other authors have been masterful using this style. Again, Sue Miller did it all right, but it just wasn't great. It was "okay." Throughout the book I searched for the plot, the true storyline. Fifty-something Cath has returned to her grandparents' home in Vermont to see if she wants to live there as opposed to her home in San Francisco. She discovers diaries written by Georgia, her grandmother, and unlocks some secrets about her grandparents and their life together.

As a young girl Georgia contracted TB and was sent to a sanitarium to recover. Although this is a big part of the story, it became grim and depressing to read about people coughing and vomiting and, in some cases, dying.

I did enjoy Cath's daughters, Karen who is pregnant with her first child and spends the entire book in bed waiting for the baby to be born, and Fiona who might be the only spark of energy in the entire book. But we only get a glimpse of these two young women.

It's not a bad book, and I finished it without a fight, but if it stays on my bookshelf, it won't be read again. She's done better.

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Summary: Interesting Parallel Stories
Review: This book is one of parallels. Cath is willed her grandmother's house and goes to stay there to figure her life out after 2 divorces and a general feeling of blah. While there, she finds her grandmother's (Georgia) diaries and reads them. She knew that her life was similar to her grandmother's but I don't think she realized how similar. Both of their mothers died while they were teens; both of them were sent away--Cath to her grandparent's house, Georgia to the sanitarium; both of them had troubled marriages.

One thing I would suggest to everyone who reads this book is to pay attention to the diary entries. There is something eerie, in my view, with the way the weather is described. I don't know if it is really the weather, or if Georgia was commenting on something else.

It is interesting to realize how misconceptions about what someone is saying and going through can drastically affect your life. This is a main theme behind this novel.

I would recommend it to anyone.

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Summary: Just too up in the air
Review: This book tries to jugle too many themes at once and ends up exploring none of them sufficiently. Your attention is jerked between the narrator's grandmother as a girl, the narrator as a girl, and the narrator as an adult. The book stretches too far to explore the experiences of each character, but never really gives a full picture of any of them. And the issues that the narrator *struggles* over are exagerated to the point of silliness: she's broken up with her husband (several years ago), her husband's new life, her daughter is having a baby, she is thinking of having an affair with an older man, her grandmother as a girl dealing with her mother's death, the grandmother's stay in a sanitorium, et cetera, et cetera... The book never settles long enough for one to enjoy it.